Midway Games |
Midway Games is a video game publisher known for such game series as Mortal Kombat , NBA Jam , and Spy Hunter . Midway traces his roots back to the electromechanical scene. In a time when Video_game didn t yet exist, the U.S coin-op business was dominated by electromechanical arcade machines with the Chicago area being the stronghold of that industry. Back then, many new companies were emerging from the Chicago or its suburbs. Midway was one these companies and, unlike most of them, Midway is still alive today.
= History=
Midway Games, originally known as Midway Manufacturing, began as an independent manufacturer of amusement equipment which was purchased by Bally in 1968. After some years making coin-operated electromechanical arcade games such as puck bowling and a simulated western shoot-out, Midway became an early US maker of arcade video games in the mid-1970s, developing their own games or establishing licensing agreements with Japanese video game developer Taito Corporation. In 1978, Midway stopped making pinball tables after parent company Bally took the decision that Bally would exclusively be in charge of producing pinball tables while Midway would handle the arcade business. Midway s breakthrough success came in 1978 with the licensing and distribution of the seminal arcade game Space Invaders in America; this was followed by a series of lucrative licensed titles including the hugely successful Pac-Man (1980). Although Midway has been the property of Bally since 1968, it wouldn t be before 1982 that Midway would start including the name of its parent company on the label of its videogames by manufacturing them under the Bally Midway brand instead of Midway only. (Bally would in turn do the same thing for its pinball tables in 1983 by replacing the Bally label for Bally Midway .) From the late 1970s through the late 1980s, Midway was the leading producer of arcade video games in the US.
The Midway division of Bally was purchased by the arcade and pinball game company Williams_Electronics in 1988. The merger between Williams and Midway led to the newly founded WMS Industries, Inc. Midway moved its headquarters from Franklin Park, Illinois to Williams s headquarters in Chicago. Both the original Williams and original Midway companies continued to live on as separate entities within WMS. WMS also obtained the right from Bally to use the Bally name for its pinball games since Bally had completely left the arcade/pinball industry to concentrate on casinos and slot machines. Under WMS ownership, Midway produced pinball tables under the Bally name and arcade games under its own name while Williams produced pinball tables under its own name and was no longer involved at all in arcade games. Much later, in 1996, WMS also purchased Time-Warner Interactive, which included Atari Games, part of the former giant Atari. 1996 also marked the year when Midway changed its original entity name Midway Manufacturing Company to Midway Games Inc . In 1998, WMS sold Midway to its shareholders, making Midway an independant company for the first time in 30 years. Midway kept Atari Games as a wholly-owned subsdiary as part of the spinoff. Despite this spinoff, Midway remained headquartered in the same building as WMS/Williams and even kept the right to continue releasing pinball tables under the Bally name due to an agreement with WMS. However on October 25, 1999, WMS/Williams shut down all of its pinball operations. Midway, no longer able to use the Bally name, also left the pinball industry in order to concentrate itself on videogames. Shortly after in January 2000, Midway changed the name of its Atari Games division to Midway Games West in order to avoid confusion with the other Atari company owned by Hasbro Interactive. Later Midway left the WMS building to relocate its main offices elsewhere in Chicago.
With this history Midway has a brilliant legacy, with games that were landmarks of their time, such as Joust , Spy Hunter , Tron (game) , Mortal Kombat , and NBA Jam .
More recently Midway has fallen on harder times; they were listed as the #20 video game publisher in September 2003 by the magazine Game Developer . In 2001,Midway shut down its arcade division due to heavy losses. On February 2003, the company closed its Midway Games West division, putting an end to what was left of the original Atari company founded in 1972 (the other part of the original Atari had dissolved in 1996 when Atari Corporation merged with hard-disk company JT_Storage). In October 2003 Midway said it expected to see about $100 million in revenues for the 2003 year, and $100 million in losses despite this. Sumner Redstone, the head of Viacom, is a large investor in the company. He also plans to buy the company in the near future. Although Midway no longer belongs to WMS, Midway remains very close to its former parent company.
In 2004 Midway began a purchasing spree of independent video game development studios which strengthens our internal product development team and reinforces our ability to make high quality games (From Midway s May 2005 Quarterly Report). In April of 2004 Midway acquired Surreal Software of Seattle, Washington. In October of 2004 they acquired Inevitable Entertainment of Austin, Texas (now known as Midway-Austin). In December of 2004 they acquired Paradox Development of Moorpark, California.
On August 4, 2005 Midway acquired the privately-held Australian based developer Ratbag. The Studio will be renamed Midway Studios-Australia.
Founded in 1958, Midway is perhaps the oldest United_States electronic game company that is still in the videogaming industry today. Midway Games is based in Chicago, Illinois.
= List of Midway s Subsidaries=
*Midway Amusement Games: Formerly the arcade division of Midway; the Bally-Midway and Williams arcade game library are now copyrighted as Midway Amusement Games, LLC *Midway Games West: Formerly Atari Games; named was changed in 1998; owns the post-1984 Atari Games library *Midway Home Entertainment: Console/home entertainment division; first started as Tradewest. The latter company was acquired by Williams (gaming company) in 1994, and was renamed Williams Entertainment, Inc.
= List of arcade games developed or licensed by Midway (selection) =
= List of console games developed or licensed by Midway (selection) =
= External link =
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